Father Tim's favorite quotes & mine too!

I love the Mitford series by Jan Karon. Her characters come to life and she makes me want to live a slower paced life in the mountains of North Carolina. If you have not read any of her books, please, go to the library asap and pick up At Home in Mitford, her first book in the series. You'll be glad you did.

After reading through the series, I wondered if I would enjoy the two books of Father Tim's quotes. The first of the two, Patches of Godlight, is so good...a collection of thoughtful quotes is always inspiring. For years I have kept my own small quote book, but after reading through some of Father Tim's quotes I may have to purchase a larger journal to hold all the ones I want to add to my own. Here are a few of my favorite:

We - or at least I - shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have "tasted and seen." Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are "patches of godlight" in the woods of experience."
-C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

If you read history you will find that Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought most of the next. The apostles themselves, who set out on foot to convert the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English evangelicals who abolished the slave trade, all left their mark on earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in." Aim at earth and you will get neither. - C. S. Lewis

None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.
- Milton

Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
- Leonard Cohen

The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the atmosphere produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to look after, and it is the one thing that is being continually assailed.
-Oswald Chambers, "My Utmost for His Highest"

The Bible without the Holy Spirit is a sundial by moonlight.
-Dwight L. Moody, 1937-1899

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
- Helen Keller

Let the Stable Still Astonish

Let the stable still astonish:
Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes,
Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
Crumbling, crooked walls;
No bed to carry that pain,
And then, the child,
Rag-wrapped, laid to cry In a trough.
Who would have chosen this?
Who would have said: "Yes, Let the God of all the heavens and earth
Be born here, in this place"?
Who but the same God
Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms
of our hearts
and says, "Yes,
let the God of Heaven and Earth be born here -
in this place."
-Leslie Leyland Fields

Keep a clear eye toward life's end. Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God's creature. What you are in His sight is what you are and nothing more. Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received...but only have you have given; a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage.
-Francis of Assisi "Letters to Rulers of People"

Never has the world had a greater need for love than in our day. People are hungry for love. We don't have time to stop and smile at each other. We are all in such a hurry! Pray. Ask for the necessary grace. Pray to be able to understand how much Jesus loved us, that you can love others. - Mother Teresa

Cultivate my heart, Lord, so I may catch every word that falls from heaven - every syllable of encouragement, every sentence of rebuke, every paragraph of instruction, every page of warning. Help me to catch these words as the soft, fertile soil catches seeds. - Ken Gire

Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it, piece by piece - by thought, choice, courage and determination. - H. Jackson Browne

There are three stages in the work of God: impossible, difficult, done. - James Hudson Taylor, English Missionary